Mutedevil
by emrys-knight
Summary: Matt is drugged and has an inability to speak. Claire and Foggy have to take care of him. (prompt fill full of comfort and stuff)


Blood dripped from the Defender's mouth, his wrists dripping in the same. He cried out, running after the Irish mob footsoldier. His legs burned with the same fire his heart contained. The rage filling his body was unmatched by anything he'd ever experienced before.

"Stop!" Matt sensed the needle. Smelled the chemicals inside. His run came to a screeching halt. "Aye, that's it. Come any closer and yer girl gets 't know what this here drug does."

Matt held his arms in a sign of surrender. "You know what to do."

"I can't," Claire shook in her attacker's hold.

"You can. You can do this."

"I hate you." She elbowed the Irishman in the jaw, dropping to her knees and rolling to the side, allowing Matt to make his move. He leapt up onto the man, fists swinging as hard and fast as he could make them, completely oblivious in his blind rage, to the needle coming at his thigh, the contents injected into his bloodstream.

"Claire…" He became lightheaded, swaying side to side after standing from his position on the man. The two were lucky he was unconscious as Matt fell against the wall, sliding down to the floor.

"No, no no no no. We gotta go. The cops are gonna be here any minute," She slid an arm behind his back and around his torso. She helped him up, carrying him as best she could.

The two stumbled through the empty alleyways of Hell's Kitchen. Matt panted against the drugs overtaking his system, making it difficult to focus on anything. His vision blurred with his hyperventilation keeping him on the verge of collapse.

"Stay with me, Daredevil. We're almost there," Claire pulled the blind hero further up, concerned at his lack of response. Chalk it up to drugs, she guessed.

::::::

The two barely made it down the stairs in one piece. Matt did everything he could to help is aid. The one who'd carried him through thick and thin. The one who'd patched him up, saved his life more than enough times to earn his eternal loyalty. His body felt as if it were shutting down. He desperately tried to speak up, alerting Claire of this, but he couldn't. He opened his mouth, speaking the words, yet no sound came out. His jaw moved up and down. His vocal cords shifted. His tongue moved. Everything was working but he couldn't get any sound out. No words were coming out!

"Okay, here we go," Claire gently lay Matt on the couch, pulling the pieces of his suit off, exposing his bruised and battered form. The bruises were beautifully painted on his ribs and chest and all along his arms. His knuckles, regardless of the padding, were still minorly damaged. His ankles and feet were swollen, legs bruised, cuts covering the whole of them. His teeth were painted a striking red, along with the lines down his chin.

Claire grabbed her med bag she'd kept in his apartment and rushed to be by his side, kneeling next to the couch. "Can you hear me, Matt?"

"Yes," He mouthed.

Assuming he was exhausted, she elected to ignore his odd choice of communication. She cleaned his wounds, not without a huff or two, here and there. She bandaged his knuckles, stitched the larger wounds and addressed his other wounds. She wrapped his torso, gaining a gasp from the Defender. "Is anything broken? There a smell of copper in the air?" She laughed.

"No," He mouthed.

"I need you to talk to me, Matt. What's wrong?" She placed a comforting hand on his chest.

"I can't," He wanted so badly to be able to do more than mouth a word or two. To speak. To hear his voice. His heart rate rose so much, Claire could feel it with her hand.

"Hey, hey," She whispered. "It's okay. I'm okay. We're safe, now. Foggy's on his way."

Matt shook his head. He winced as he sat up on the couch, grabbing a firm grip on her shoulders, though making sure not to hurt her. He mouthed it, repeatedly, as if it were life and death; if he stopped, he would die. "I can't talk. It won't come out."

"What do you mean?"

Matt raised his arms and quickly dropped them in frustration. "Foggy."

"Foggy?"

He nodded.

"He should be here any minute, now."

Foggy practically kicked the door in, nearly falling down the stairs, to get to his best friend. "Matt!"

"Please don't yell, Foggy. He was hit a few times and then drugged. He said he can't talk. He said he needs you."

"Yeah, he asked me to bring his computer stuff over so we could work on a case, but I guess he got all dressed up, didn't he?"

Claire sighed, frustrated with Foggy's irritation. "If you knew why, you wouldn't be so quick to judge,"

"We've already made it clear that I don't want to know anything. It's better that way," Foggy set his bag down, taking Matt's computer stuff out, putting the keyboard on the coffee table, the laptop hooked up to it. "Alright, Matt. Go for it."

Matt painfully leaned forward, groaning. He typed as fast as he could on the keyboard, the voice in the computer doing its best to keep up. "I think the drug made it to where I can't talk. I can feel it and I can move my mouth and lips and tongue but no sound is coming out."

"I can run one or two at-home tests, but without hospital equipment-"

"No." The computer's voice interrupted in a monotone. It would have been a harsher tone if Matt had the choice. "No hospitals."

Claire groaned, grabbing the test kit. "Someday, I'm gonna drag your ass into an Emergency Room and you're going to have no choice but to sit there and accept treatment."

Matt nodded with a soundless laughter. He wrapped a hand around his ribs.

"I wouldn't try it. I've been telling him for the past two years that he needs to stop. Does he listen? No. And now he can't talk!"

Matt flinched.

"Foggy, keep your voice down." Claire pulled a chair up next to the couch. "I know you're mad. I am, too, but messing with his senses, on purpose, like that, isn't the way to deal with this."

"It's fine." The voice in the computer stated.

Claire tilted her head, giving a frustrated look to the blind hero.

"You know he can't see that."

"It's for effect," She drew the blood she needed to add drops to the different test tubes. "If this one turns red, then it's nothing. If it turns blue, it's exactly what I think it is. Matt, if it turns red, it'll smell like gunpowder. If it turns blue, it'll smell like burnt rubber." She tilted the tube, the contents inside shifted their color.

"Burnt rubber." The computer chirped.

"I can fix this," She rifled through the bag, pushing things to and fro until she found the box. A box containing only one syringe left. She plunged the needle into his arm, injecting all of its contents through his bloodstream. He could feel it cool his veins. His eyes rolled into the back of his head before closing, altogether.

"Woah, what the Hell?" Foggy stepped forward, arms outstretched towards Matt as the Defender slid down into a horizontal position.

"It's fine. It has the same feeling as morphine. It's going to fix what's going on with his voice. He'll sleep for a little while then he'll be better," She pulled a blanket over him, watching his even breathing.

"He's already got the wounded duck thing going with the blindness," Foggy whispered. "If he were mute, too… There'd be no women left for the rest of us."

Claire laughed. "No more women for him. You don't have to worry. He's all mine, now."


End file.
